Millions of underage children on Facebook

A survey has found that there are as many as 7.5 million Facebook users under the age of 13, despite the social networking giant's restriction to users aged 14 and over.

The US-based Consumer Reports survey found that more than a third of minors were younger than Facebook officially allows and that most of the accounts were not supervised by adults.

Astonishingly only 18 per cent of the parents 'friended' their own child which Consumer Reports said was the "best way to monitor the child," going further to recommend that parents delete the profiles of pre-teen children.

The situation is similar in Europe with a survey released by the European Commission last month finding that 20 per cent of children aged between nine and 12 had a Facebook account.